Big Tort Lawyer Turns State's Evidence

The New York Sun reports:

Federal prosecutors are closing in on two titans of the class action bar, Melvyn Weiss and William Lerach, after one of their former law partners pleaded guilty to scheming to make secret payments to plaintiffs in securities lawsuits.

David Bershad, 67, entered a guilty plea to one felony count of conspiracy before Judge John Walter yesterday afternoon. During the 40-minute hearing, Bershad told the judge that prosecutors were correct when they charged that the firm where he worked for nearly four decades, Milberg Weiss & Bershad, paid investors to serve as named plaintiffs. Bershad, the longtime financial chief for the firm, also implicated Messrs. Weiss and Lerach by agreeing that they were aware of and participated in the payments.

"Of course, this is the worst possible development," a law professor at New York University, Stephen Gillers, said. "It bodes ill for Partners A & B," the professor said, using the pseudonyms prosecutors have adopted to refer to Messrs. Weiss and Lerach in court proceedings. "Each of them is clearly in the prosecutors' sights," Mr. Gillers said. With Bershad's testimony, prosecutors "may now have the ability to pull the trigger" and obtain an indictment of the two men, Mr. Gillers said.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.No word yet from John Edwards on tort lawyers using serial witnesses.